By the time the evening ended, it was as if I were transported to my favourite museum in the world: Seattle’s Frank Gehry-designed Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum. Who else but McLuhan could inspire an evening of electronic mysticism and an elegant musical composition? I became more familiar with who McLuhan was, like many others I suspect, through his famous cameo in Annie Hall. Even more recently, Douglas Coupland’s biography of the man (how very apt!) as part of the Extraordinary Canadians series by Penguin was the only one (to my knowledge) which has been re-published in the U.S. under the title of the stinging rebuke delivered in Woody Allen’s movie, ‘You Know Nothing Of My Work!’
2011 denotes the centenary of McLuhan’s birth and as such there have been events around the world to commemorate his unique legacy. We were very fortunate to have B.W. Powe, one of the fabled six students to whom McLuhan taught his last class, to expand and expound the vast implications and ramifications of McLuhan’s often obscure writings. It was great to have the Writer’s Fest play host to the centenary here in Ottawa as it’s frequently unfortunate that Canadians often are the last to acknowledge and celebrate greatness from their own. As Powe would later admit, it took the University of Toronto until this year to give a proper recognition for McLuhan as part of the legendary ‘Toronto School’ of thinkers, which included Northrop Frye, Harold Innis and Glenn Gould; people who remain indispensable to understanding contemporary media culture. It was only the emergence of the Internet and digital technology which revivified him to prominence and vindicated his early supporters.
There were many contemporaries of McLuhan who viewed him with suspicion and in some cases, outright hostility. His work is often littered with prose so delicate and dense that it mirrors the great Jewish sage Maimonides for being esoteric and demanding to parse. Indeed one can think of those like Powe, as faithful commentators akin to the Talmudic tradition. Even Douglas Coupland “found the material so difficult that every two to three pages, he had to take a break from reading.” One way the general and interested reader may dare to scale the walls may be through his many interviews, which consist many of his elaborate ideas succinctly captured.
Powe, who said the he found the Writer’s Fest in Ottawa to be a spark for many of his subsequent writing, seemed clearly poised to preach to a receptive audience. I honestly expected an brief summary of McLuhan’s life and influence, some music then mingling before heading home unscathed as I saw the program with Karsh's (who seems incapable of taking a bad picture) portrait of McLuhan stare back at me. What followed was a soaring incursion into the mystical elements of today’s technological advances when one follows McLuhan’s trails. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin stated that we “are spiritual beings having a human experience” rather than vice versa. De Chardin’s work would act in juxtaposition to McLuhan’s own work in many ways since de Chardin was also regarded as controversial with many of his work being denied publication by the Roman Catholic Church at that time (the church has since been very receptive to his work with Pope Benedict XVI praising some his ideas).
When McLuhan was asked to describe the 21st Century in only one word, his response was “apocalypse”. While that may conjure up images of annihilation and Armageddon, McLuhan’s derivation finds its etymology in D.H. Lawrence’s aphorism that it is a “new kind of consciousness”. In the mechanical age, technology was seen very much as an extension of the body (notice how the 70s and 80s featured impressive machines and robots à la Star Trek, The Jetsons and Robocop albeit without any inkling of digital prowess) but the advent of the digital and electronic age has ushered in the notion and reality that technology could be an extension of our mind and even our soul. The impact of digital technology has essentially rewired our brains and has brought us closer to each other (in theory at least) so that being part of a “global village” or “global theatre” (a later perhaps more accurate McLuhan terminology according to Powe) means that there is an immediate response to events happening around the world. Much of it is the cause of optimism and the foreboding of a new age of interdependence and openness. Witness the crumbling of dictatorships in the Arab world or that fact that China is ever uneasy with its increasingly bold citizenry or the instantaneous generosity of donations to disasters around the world.
McLuhan was in many aspects a very traditional man; a staunch Catholic who didn’t necessarily have a fondness for what he saw changing around him. As Coupland would propose in his biography, religion seems to be a great “spot to park his (McLuhan’s) overpowering need for a viewpoint that could explain, or perhaps heal, the stress and disjointedness he saw in the world.” Yet, McLuhan had an uncanny and admirably quality of not casting judgement on his own pronouncements (the anti-Chomsky if you will) – in one instance, Powe demanded to know whether one of McLuhan’s observation was a good or a bad thing; McLuhan refused to comment on grounds that it was much bigger than could be fully grasped.
De Chardin really was after what he termed “the global heart of consciousness”. Powe posited that we may be in that era of opening where the gates (much as a Kabbalah tradition holds) of the garden would once again be open. But it may be hard to see or fathom that due to “our cracked natures” (hello Leonard Cohen!) Powe termed this new age “Neuroromanticism”. While, admittedly, Powe’s views extend deeper than can be captured in an article of this length, part of me remained sceptical regarding aspects of de Chardin and Powe’s bewitching ideas. I couldn’t help, mysticism aside, and recall the many negative downsides that technology in this new age has wrought: with the decline of learning and inter-personal relationships being a couple of key arenas.
But I do appreciate the positive outlook of McLuhan who in the spirit of the Christian hope, believed that things would work out well and that one could in imitation of G.K. Chesterton’s exhortation be a “practical mystic” whose “religion is less of a theory and more of a love affair.” Powe graciously ended his lecture by stating that “all of this makes sense, even if I don’t.”
The talk was followed by a special fifteen minute concerto composition based on some of McLuhan’s quotes by the über-talented Ottawan Mike Dubue (on Vibraphone and Synth) and Paul Hogan (electric guitar) of Hilotrons fame, featuring the entrancing Octavie Dostaler-Lalonde from Montréal on cello.
No, I did not go home unscathed. Just as well.
